


What If... (unfinished stories - a collection)

by mymindsofar



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Bratty!Steve, Feels, M/M, Natasha Is a Good Bro, Quick Fix-It for a small thing that bugged me about TWS, Steve Does All The Things Bucky Says No To, overprotective!bucky, well that makes it sound so dramatic don't it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-08
Updated: 2017-02-08
Packaged: 2018-09-23 00:19:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9631346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mymindsofar/pseuds/mymindsofar
Summary: Stories that lost their potential not too many words in, but were not crappy enough to fully discard. Each chapter is a different attempt.Mostly AU





	1. Ilvermorny? More like IlvermorNo, Steve

**Author's Note:**

> You know that itch when this great concept for a story pops into your head, you jump to the nearest device you can type on and a couple thousand words later you realize you have no idea where to go with it?
> 
> This is the itch.

“You’re not actually doing it, are you?” Bucky asks skeptically, unintentionally watching out for the professor. He always fucking does this and always fucking hates himself for doing so. He’s an enabler.

Steve, completely unfazed, continues mixing together what he discovered as a legit alternative to alcohol; same effects, no smell, no taste, no hangover. That’s enough reason for Bucky not to trust it. He is totally not drinking that later. Last time Steve messed around with potions, he was left with cat ears for a week. It doesn’t sound so bad in retrospect. Natasha said it was cute. Natasha does not use the word ‘cute’.

But since they were _additional_ ears that popped out of his skull, Steve couldn’t sleep due to all the extra noise he could suddenly hear. Not that Bucky has personally been there, given their different houses, because if he had been, he’d made sure the experience taught him something. As it is, he’s preparing the Drought of Peace potion they were assigned to do, from which Steve derived his alteration by leaving out the sleepy factor and keeping in the feel-good parts. Or so he was told.

Bucky concentrates on his own assignment, hoping Steve’s potion won’t blow up in his face. Wouldn’t be the first time, either. With how much Steve likes to experiment and how bravely Bucky stays by his side, Bucky has recently started to question the sorting accuracy of the eagle pendant.

“Peggy, Sam and I were gonna hang out later, wanna join?” Steve asks nonchalantly. It took Steve five years to find friends, and now Bucky regrets ever having encouraged him to do so.

Yes, Peggy is an exchange student from Hogwarts and Sam is basically – or maybe actually – in love with Steve. To be honest, they both are, but Peggy hides it so far away Steve doesn’t even consider to look.

In elementary school, everyone casually joked Bucky was an extension of Steve. Another arm or something. Bucky never would have thought they’d go into different houses, and that it would drag them apart someday.

“With that stuff?” Bucky hisses back. He literally feels Steve shifting away from him.

“Well, yeah. We’ll meet under the bridge.”

“No, thanks.”

Steve leaves the fucking potion unattended. “Migraine again?”

“Yes.” Lie.

“Have you tried Aspirin?” _No, Steve, I still ask my crystal ball when I’m going to die_. In the 21 st century, even wizards had to admit that Nomag’s got the hang of _some_ things at this point better than the ones with the wands did.

“Yeah. And I’ve been at the infirmary, too. It’s nothing.”

“It’s because you study so much,” Steve complains, and that forces a defeated snort out of Bucky. Steve’s learning method is to concentrate on the subjects he finds useful (meaning Defense Against the Dark Arts and Quidditch) and fucking around like this during the remaining subjects. And he is impeccably skilled in getting away with it, because of his big dumb blue eyes and the veil of innocence that comes with it.

If only they knew what a fucking shithead the guy can be. _‘It’s not like I’m gonna find powdered unicorn horn somewhere in the woods,’_ he told Bucky during the discussion they had at the beginning of this assignment, reasoning why he’s doing this in class specifically. Bucky reasoned that Steve could just as well use his permission slip to get out to the city on the weekend, to which the reply was, ‘True, but where’s the fun in that?’

The professor circles them again, and Bucky tenses unintentionally. “That’s a, uh, strange mix,” he comments upon Steve’s potion. Bucky bets Steve nearly said ‘thanks’.

“Try some more Belladonna.”

“Yes, sir,” Steve replies dutifully. Bucky isn’t buying his shit, and shoves him lightly.

“I’m not giving you half of my potion next time just so you can pass,” Bucky threatens. It’s not like it makes sense that they cook up an entire cauldron for just one presentative potion, but that can’t be the reason.

“Then I’ll ask Nat,” Steve pouts back. She lifts her head upon hearing her name, and scoffs at them, something akin to a nod or a tiny smile for normal people.

Bucky smirks at her in return. “She’ll detach your limb sooner than giving you anything.”

Steve looks up with interest. “Is there a spell for that?”

“What, you have someone in mind to try it on?” Bucky says, stirring with his left hand.

“You, of course,” Steve jokes.

“Which limb?”

“Left arm,” Steve reckons, “It wouldn’t be missed. You heard about that Steven Hawking guy, who like, can’t move but has a brilliant brain? I have the feeling you could be like that, too.”

Bucky isn’t sure whether he should be offended. On one hand, he just got complimented for his smarts, on the other, every other part of him was labeled useless. “Of course I know Haw _kins._ I read his books.”

And considering that he’s the Bluebronze’s keeper, Steve can’t dismiss him with a useless body. Steve probably doesn’t mean it that way, but it feels to Bucky like he doesn’t actually matter much to him to correct himself.

Lately more so. The spark that was lit when they got into the light jab died out very quickly with that. “Alright, class, please clean your desks and leave the potions — if you can — under your tables and seal them well, whoever is not able to set it to cool now can stay for a little longer.” Steve raises his hand, obviously, and Nat doesn’t move an inch when it’s time to pack, although all three have Quidditch practice afterwards. The professor nods and gives them the time they need. Steve is brilliantly sneaky, he pours the clear blue liquid into a bottle soundlessly and thanks to Bucky, without the teacher noticing it happening. Then, Bucky kills the flame underneath his cauldron, packs up and leaves before Steve.

It surprises him that only few moments later, Natasha is right beside him. “You’re running so fast one could mistake it for warm-up,” she mocks, not even remotely out of breath.

“Don’t mind me, just running away from my problems,” he replies.


	2. B Stands for Biting the Dust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fill-in scene from CA:TWS. What Steve and Natasha did in the hours of dawn after SHIELD tried to nuke them - now with feels.

Telling Natasha she should be sleeping is an utter waste of breath. Steve still can’t shake off the ringing in his ears himself. Nat doesn’t look so rosy, either.

Bucky shattered on rock and snow for nothing; the Howlies, for how ceremonious their burials must have been, were buried under a lie and Peggy… If she knew as much as a scratch of what Zola just told them, she could never forgive herself for being so blind, he’s sure. So maybe it’s a good thing she never has to find out, he wouldn’t want to put that weight on her shoulders.

They’ve somehow found enough room for the two of them to spread across the backseats of the SUV, Natasha’s head in his lap as his line of sight barely reaches the window, keeping watch. He knows she isn’t asleep. Between the nearly unregistered shifts of her body, his heightened senses can hear her blink. He carefully places his hand on her shoulder, curled into herself next to him.

“Zola was wrong about one thing,” she mutters, triumph shaking in her voice confirming mundanely that she in fact didn’t fall asleep. “I wasn’t born in ’87. SHIELD recruited me in 2002. That would have suggested I was fifteen at the time.” Steve doesn’t follow. He’s heard rumors only, but she was supposedly active in the field far before she reached that age. She looks up, and the confusion she finds must be enough to elaborate. “It means Zola’s database relies on SHIELD’s records, which makes sense. But it also means Zola never got Fury’s clearance.”

“That also makes sense,” Steve replies quietly, not intending to disrupt her intriguing and almost uplifting narrative. He’s lowered his standards for good news, to be fair. What’s more important, it confirms that Fury isn’t the traitor, contrary to what Pierce had suggested.

She chuckles bitterly. “It does. He didn’t know I caused mayhem and dismay long before the KGB was even founded.” He can’t avoid shooting up a brow at that. She doesn’t look a day over over twenty-seven, not even _as_ old, but since that would make her over sixty, that…

“That can’t be.”

“Sure, if you believe a German scientist was the only one looking for a formula to eradicate the faults of being a dying organism. The serum they gave me might not be as good as yours, but it did work better than anti-aging crème, don’t you think?”

Steve searches for evidence of the past decades on her face, but only finds it in her weary eyes. It’s like he’s suspected it, but never acted upon it. _Sound familiar?_

“You’re immortal?”

She hides her face from him, suppressing another chuckle. “No. But if all goes horribly wrong, I’ll be around for a little longer,” she forces out. The sentence lingers, a bad aftertaste in the small space. Steve throws a look outside to find the coast still cleared. They haven’t bothered to keep eye on the site with choppers, and probably wouldn’t think that their favorite runaways came up with the ingenious idea to sit tight in the car they came there with until the imminent threat was over. Hiding in plain sight, old spy tricks. Mostly fairytales to him.

It was Nat’s idea, he’ll admit it was quite effective when they get out alive. If.

“Steve, who was that girl? In the base?”

Natasha didn’t go to the SHIELD Academy. Apparently she didn’t dig where she didn’t need to. It may be smart, keeping her head clear for the information she needs and not filling it up with excess data, even if it is a big slip up, not recognizing the founder of SHIELD. “Margaret Carter… Peggy.”

“ _The_ Carter? I’ve never seen her so…” He wonders if he’s the first to make Natasha afraid of saying something out loud. Probably not.

“Young? Now imagine how it’s like for me,” he prompts, lips growing tight with a smile that fools no one in his vicinity. With her head turned up to him now, she cocks an eyebrow to make him stop.

“I heard the rumors. If you’d made it through, would you have proposed?” Hearing rumors in Natasha’s case was equivalent to snooping above her clearance level, which makes him wonder how pictures of Peggy never popped up, whether the question was a real question at all, or whether Nat just did what apparently everyone was good at in this organization; pretending.

The organization that thawed him, that was supposed to protect people, was being spoiled all the while, infiltrated by parasites, smiling faces with white collars and the same uniforms as the next guy. And that’s the problem. Every guy could be the next guy, or not.

He doesn’t want a war, but he feels like it’s building up in spite of that. Reluctantly, he returns to Natasha’s even more painful question.

“Of course I would have, when it was all over.” He doesn’t think about that. He puts it aside as a fact, something that the version of him wished for before he died.

Nat scoffs, inhaling deep as if preparing to say something. She’s turned her face away from him once again. “I got married with a pair of loose threads from our uniforms threaded around our fingers, in that same war. It’s never really over. We didn’t have the luxury to wait.”

Steve chuckles. “I would make a reference to that internet joke about Soviet Russia, but I feel very vulnerable in this position.” He contemplates on what to say instead. “Did you love him?”

She looks up at him, but he pretends to keep watch. “Surely. As much as you have to love a man who saved your life.” Steve dwells on it for a while. By that count, if measurable, how much did he love Bucky, for saving him countless of times, in back alleys, in the dark nights of pneumonia, from German snipers on the field? How much love did Steve owe him?

And another thought sparks at that; if Natasha thought of irreparable debts that way, what has he gained by covering her during SHIELD’s bombing? Out of fear of putting a foot in his mouth, he says nothing to that. Natasha is artfully skilled in deadpanning conversations and reviving them when needed. No matter who speaks, she exerts control over what is said. It’s a talent he never understood, and a skill he never acquired himself.

He is too tired to challenge her world views, as they don’t repel him as much as they should. And he is tired, has been for far longer than since he escaped the legal system.

“You can’t put everything into amounts and numbers,” he reasons weakly. She lifts her head.

“But I’ll try,” she replies, with an almost childish stubbornness that refuses to see the complexity of feeling, or, worse, fear it. Natasha is afraid of loving, and thus she categorizes it.

Steve chuckles. “I suppose that’s one thing you exceed in.”

“You too, Rogers.” She rises up, slowly, to avoid any sensors HYDRA might have left outside the car. Not that they would register something as insignificant as the slight weight shift inside a car or a head popping up from the seats, considering they would have also noticed them getting in here, but.

They’re both very familiar with risks. Taking them, calculating them, ignoring them. Their balance between recklessness and caution was the key to their survival. Maybe it’s the spirit of the time, incepted by war and disasters, similar shaping by their surroundings.

They were both born in a different time, after all.

She looks at him for a report on their situation, pointing her chin to the window. “It’s clear. I held watch a couple of times back in my days, you know,” he muses cockily, and she smirks.

“Fighting the same enemy, mind you,” she mutters. If only she was wrong.

Enemies. He thinks back to her story about the engineer and the ghost. “Whose side were you on when you encountered the Soldier?”

Nat laughs dryly. “ _Sides_ , Steve, really?”

“It’s hard to let go of good and bad when that’s what you’ve lived your life for. Being on the good side.” He’s thought of ditching the costume plenty. He only took it on for what it represented, for how Bucky saw him in it.

“What a naïve way of thinking. Very American.” He should be offended, but he truly can’t. In fact, he rather agrees with her.

“What you were raised to believe?” he wonders, afraid of the question, even more of the answer. Religion provided some answers, but it shielded him from so many questions. He doesn’t have much faith left these days.

“In my eyes, I was doing our country  good. I truly believed this country needed twenty-eight trained young girls to keep it running.”

“Twenty-eight?”

“The Black Widows of the Red Room. Little lady killers.” Steve gulps. _How_ little?

“Where are the others now?” Another eggshell question.

“Dead. All besides me.”

Steve knows the rest of the story, like he’s heard it a thousand times over already. In many ways, Natasha is a little too predictable. In many more, she’s anything but. He’s heard enough – it’s not like Nat cares. “But it doesn’t always pay to be the strongest in the room. We’d be dead if we went for the offense in the mall.”

Steve smiles, finally having a reason to. “You saved my life too, then.”

“It seems to be a habit people develop around you,” she snarls, and he isn’t quite sure how to read it.

“Doesn’t that make me a liability?”

She shrugs. “Probably.” He doesn’t want to seem too optimistic, but he feels like a stray cat found actual liking in him. Not the superficial, somewhat intrusive interest in his love life, but an actual liking in who he is.

“Bucky has been getting me out of trouble for longer than I can remember.” She must know who Bucky is. If not for the Smithsonian wing, then at least for being the only Howling Commando to die on the field.

“Is that why you committed suicide two days after his death?” He looks away. Kind of answering without saying a word. She plays him like an instrument.

“Truth is a matter of circumstance,” he replays to her.

“Captain America, the bisexual hero of our generation,” Natasha muses. Steve tenses at the accusation.

“Who said bisexual?” he retorts sharply, and Nat nearly laughs out loud.

“Back when the Avengers were formed, I haven’t thoroughly investigated your history, hence my unawareness about you and Margaret Carter, but I have eyes to see. You don’t mention him often, but you always light up like a Christmas tree when you do. And then the guilt comes.” He lowers his eyes, but away from her, supporting his chin on his arm, elbow leaned against the window. “There you go,” she adds.

“We weren’t ever… involved, if that’s what you’re thinkin’. He was busy with the dames and I… well.” His native tongue slipped through, feels like a sweet drop of honey on his lips.

“You never tried,” Nat prompts.

“Not until Peggy, but that… That was different. You don’t get chosen for a war program due to the _goodness of your heart_ every day of the week, and you certainly don’t become a laughable icon afterwards. Peggy believed in Captain America, just like she believed this country could be, I suppose, more like him.” He doesn’t think he is everything people should strive for, but so far from it. Steve Rogers is shell-shocked, conflicted, broken. Reaching out for whatever light he stumbles upon on his way. “Maybe it’s time for the Captain to change with the time, too.”

“Sexuality-wise or plan-of-action-wise?” Nat asks, amusement lingering in her voice.

He ignores her. “We need to do something, people can’t be kept in the dark about this.”

She scoffs. “The United States of America hate us, or at least the intelligence part of it, how are you planning to convince them about what we saw?”

“We show them the true face of Project INSIGHT.”

She’s about to cue the national anthem, he’s sure. “Not while we look this glamorously messed up. Rogers, we need a safe place. We need to make a plan A and plan B.”

Steve looks up. “B stands for biting the dust. But I have an idea.” He can’t trust his friends, so maybe it’s time to trust a stranger.

In the hours of dawn, they make their way back to DC.


End file.
